For Part 1 of this series, see Kung Fu in Kabul: Part 1: Kung Fu Masters, Job Creation, Refugees and the Free Press
Saturday, February 14, 2015 (early afternoon): Grandmaster Abdul “Rahim Kung Fu”
First on my list of things to do today was to pay a visit and my respects to Abdul Rahim Yosufi. Popularly known all around Afghanistan as “Rahim Kung Fu,” he is the General Director of the Afghan National Federation of Kung Fu by popular vote of the athletes—though another master in town disputes this. Abdul Rahim is nonetheless the oldest of the masters in Kabul. He’s been teaching the longest, and considering the large number of his students and students of his students, and the prestige he garners from the public and other Wushu and Kung Fu people in Kabul, he is definitely The Grandmaster.
His gigantic four-story Kung Fu school is on one of the city’s old center squares and has no shortage of huge signs advertising it. But there were so many doors to the building that Shuja had to ask which door it was. A small group of distinguished-looking gentlemen were standing and talking in a circle in front of the doors, and we found out one of them was Grandmaster Rahim Kung Fu himself.
A few words are necessary here about a unique aspect of Afghani culture. First, if one does and says things that harmonize with their unique culture and style, Afghans are absolutely the most welcoming and safe people I’ve ever met (this of course would not include attacking them with bombs or whatever). In any case Shuja and I must have done and said the right things because this group of distinguished gentlemen was very welcoming indeed. Of course, being on assignment from Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine likely helps a lot too. Kung Fu Tai Chi’s Associate Publisher Gene Ching does write a great Press Assignment Letter, I might add.
Grandmaster Abdul Rahim and a couple of his friends gave us a tour of his huge martial art school. He has upwards of eight very large training areas, at least a couple of rings, maybe 50 heavy and other-sized bags hanging here and there (with just the right weight, hardness and balance), weight training equipment, some gymnastic equipment, other matted areas for wrestling and so on. This, however, is not some fancy club. Everything there (except the hanging bags) looked about a million years old, but it all works, and this place is rocking when they get going. It’s like “Rocky Balboa” doing ghetto training times 20 simultaneously with a vastly wider range of cultural diversity.
Anyways, after the tour he invited us into his large office (which was warm) to sit on the couches and relax. With help from Shuja, I introduced us and started asking questions about his past and current things in the hard-hitting world of Kung Fu, Wushu and the tremendously popular Sanda in Afghanistan.
Grandmaster Rahim Kung Fu is from Panshir, the shock troop battleground for the last defense of Kabul by the Mujahedeen against the Soviet invasion (1980–1985) and a major battleground during the civil war (1996–2001). Grandmaster Rahim Kung Fu had been there in the thick of it all; specifically, he trained thousands of men in unarmed combat derived from the Kung Fu training he’d taken in Iran some years before.
He started his Kung Fu training during the war with the Soviets some 43 years ago at the age of 17. His trainer was an Iranian named Hussain Dadashi. Five years later he returned to Afghanistan and began teaching. That was 32 years ago. He was the first, which makes him the real grandfather of Kung Fu in Afghanistan. On his large new smart phone he showed us high-resolution videos of him with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panshir; he appeared to be in the inner circle throughout the wars working as commander and trainer. He also showed us videos of him doing both—definitely training men in combat Sanshou and Sanda, and leading men.
“Nowadays,” he said, “there are hundreds of Sanda clubs in Kabul.” He alone has 27 active branches in 34 provinces of Afghanistan. To become an active branch it has to have 20–30 clubs, and each club has to have a minimum of 100 students. That’s 67,500 students minimum because some clubs are much larger than just a hundred students. Considering that many of his former students have gone on to become masters and teachers, he has more than 100,000 students, and if you add them all up over the years it’s got to be more than a million students.
There are, he said, 54 federations in the Afghan Olympics, and he is the “General Director of Physical Education and Sport” for the National Olympic Committee, and the “General Director of the National Federation of Kung Fu.” “Kung Fu is by far the most influential martial art in Afghanistan,” he said.
The interview drifted a bit, which was OK with me (I’m willing to flow with the Dao of things). This was most definitely the most sincere Muslim environment in the world; these gentlemen are bonded by blood and war over a long multi-generation period of time. Their Islam is pure and simple, and they’ve lived on the edge of life and death their whole lives, with most of those lives dedicated to fighting for freedom from foreign invasions and other foreign-inspired indigenous groups bent on taking that freedom. Of course he didn’t say any of this, but his every gesture and word affirmed it.
He did mention however that, “If the foreign aid given to Afghanistan during the recent wars were distributed equally to everyone in Afghanistan, each person would get 4.5 million dollars.” And, he asked, “Where is it?”
During a bit more drift in the conversation, he mentioned having 40-some female students as well, which got me to thinking, those “friends” of his seemed to be more following us than with us, and I’d bet my bottom dollar that the site of this large school (as the Brits would call it, a very large, very old “round-about”) is armed to the teeth … but this is getting a bit “off course and speculative,” and I sure wasn’t going to ask. It didn’t look that way. It looked like a relaxed, friendly but busy branch of the downtown area.
I asked if any Kung Fu people from China ever visited his schools or other Kung Fu schools in Kabul or around Afghanistan, and he said he’d never heard of it, though they would all certainly welcome such individuals.
After the interview we went downstairs to what was probably the main training area, took pictures, played with kicks and punches for a while and took more pictures.
On our way out, he asked to be notified of international competitions in Beijing, and I promised to inform some people in the Chinese Kung Fu Federation of how enthusiastically, diligently and on a massive scale Afghan people embrace Kung Fu.
Sunday, February 15 (3:00 pm): Interviews at Refugee Camp
Hopping in a taxi, Shuja and I headed to one of several refugee camps around Kabul, a place called, “SHADO - Charahi Qambar Camp,” or so the sign said, funded by WHO and administered by SHRDO. And, yep, there’s a phone number there too, which I’m sure would be useful if one spoke Dari, Pushtun, Tajik, Urdu, Uzbek or one of the other languages permeating this very diverse city and had a phone and influence—but as we found out, the phone number seemed quite useless to the residents there.
Why a refugee camp? I’d left a part of my heart in a refugee camp in another central Asian war in a different Muslim country some 20+ years ago and promised to come back. I haven’t got back there yet, but refugee camps are pretty much the same in most ways…
Right away we decided against going into the interior of the camp, but chose to remain near the periphery, at least so we could see the street most of the time. We first met some children; then a couple of adults came from inside the camp. We introduced ourselves and I started asking all kinds of questions, with the answers generally adding up to the following:
This camp has about 1,200 families and sometimes they go two and three weeks without food. When they do have food, it’s just flour—50 kilos for 20 families. There are no fruits, vegetables or meat. The children have to go out begging in the morning.
One man was from the Kuchi nomadic tribe in the Uruzgan Province.
These human beings are the most painful living memories of the wars between the Taliban and the US-backed National Army of Afghanistan. Asked if the Ministry of Refugees helped them, they didn’t seem to know what it was. I asked why they didn’t just go back home, and they said it was too dangerous—the war with the Taliban continues there. When I asked if crime in the camp was a problem, they said, “No. Alhamdullilah.” (Thanks to God.) Each man had a different story; they were from all over Afghanistan but mostly the South.
After a while the crowd grew to maybe 20 people, and I got the cell phone numbers of three of them. How they got their phones I didn’t ask.
After saying farewell, we met Mohiuddin Farzami, Shuja’s friend and former classmate at Kabul University of Law and Political Science, who owns a “P.O.S.” car (kind of like mine in Beijing), and who hails from the same district as Abbas Alizada, the “Afghan Bruce Lee” who became an international Internet sensation over the past few months.
For Part 3, click here.
